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This looks great, thanks for sharing. I do think it would be more ergonomic to have this served via a website given that it feels CRUD-like with some browsing o

This looks great, thanks for sharing. I do think it would be more ergonomic to have this served via a website given that it feels CRUD-like with some browsing of exercises, relationships between them, etc. The CLI approach assumes people are comfortable using the terminal, which unfortunately limits the number of potential users

trane_project 4y ago
Definitely. I have not worked in frontend/ux stuff for over 10 years, and I am working on this by myself, so I have been focusing on the CLI to quickly iterate and prove that it works reasonably well. Part of the reason of trying it out on math was to a find a more technical group of users. The ideal state is a graphic interface where the exercises are presented on the screen to reduce the friction. Gotta start somewhere.
- compacct27 4y ago
  I’ve been coding UI’s for over 8 years now, and I love ed tech adjacent projects like this. Wanna team up on making the UI?
  - trane_project 4y ago
    Sure. I would love some help. I am visiting my family all March (I am typing this from the airport), so I don't know how much time I'll have to work on trane for the next month. But maybe that gives you some time to use it, and read the code and docs. I am not going to put my personal email here, and I don't see an option to send private messages on hn, although it's probably out there somewhere. Probably in the commits, lol. Worst case, feel free to open an issue on the trane repo. As a first ask, what do you think of this: https://github.com/1Password/typeshare https://github.com/1Password/typeshare? I figured writing the UI in rust is probably not a good idea. The ecosystem for UI is very immature and the language itself is probably overkill. But doing it in typescript/html/css requires you to understand the internal data structures (all the JSON files you see in the courses are just serialized rust objects). I found that repo and it seems like a promising approach to autogenerate the types and make the interaction easier.
jackthetab 4y ago
I'm more than happy to do a CLI app, but I think this needs a way to run it on a phone (noticed I don't necessarily mean "app" ;-). I can see me doing this on my phone while waiting for the barista to make my coffee. I'm going to do something similar with Anki. I'll try to compare the two...
- trane_project 4y ago
  Main difference with anki is that anki explicitly discourages trying to make dependencies between flashcards or decks. I tried to work out something like that into Anki, but as I saw it, dependencies were core to what I had in mind. There's some similar functionality in supermemo, but it's based on a tree, not a graph, so it was inherently limited. No experience in mobile at all so that'll have to wait, but a GUI/website/app that works on most platforms is something I would like to work out eventually.
  - airstrike 4y ago
    Mobile these days can be React Native which also "builds" for the web and desktop Next.js makes React less painful Solito makes Next.js + React Native a possibility today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30678100 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30678100
    - trane_project 4y ago
      I know it's possible. But the last time I did any frontend work, jQuery was the state of the art. So I decided that for now my efforts are better spent nailing the core experience and creating more courses.
      - airstrike 4y ago
        I'm not saying you don't know it's possible, just providing you pointers on one possible stack should you decide to go down that path

trane_project 4y ago

Definitely. I have not worked in frontend/ux stuff for over 10 years, and I am working on this by myself, so I have been focusing on the CLI to quickly iterate and prove that it works reasonably well. Part of the reason of trying it out on math was to a find a more technical group of users. The ideal state is a graphic interface where the exercises are presented on the screen to reduce the friction. Gotta start somewhere.

compacct27 4y ago
I’ve been coding UI’s for over 8 years now, and I love ed tech adjacent projects like this. Wanna team up on making the UI?
- trane_project 4y ago
  Sure. I would love some help. I am visiting my family all March (I am typing this from the airport), so I don't know how much time I'll have to work on trane for the next month. But maybe that gives you some time to use it, and read the code and docs. I am not going to put my personal email here, and I don't see an option to send private messages on hn, although it's probably out there somewhere. Probably in the commits, lol. Worst case, feel free to open an issue on the trane repo. As a first ask, what do you think of this: https://github.com/1Password/typeshare https://github.com/1Password/typeshare? I figured writing the UI in rust is probably not a good idea. The ecosystem for UI is very immature and the language itself is probably overkill. But doing it in typescript/html/css requires you to understand the internal data structures (all the JSON files you see in the courses are just serialized rust objects). I found that repo and it seems like a promising approach to autogenerate the types and make the interaction easier.

jackthetab 4y ago

I'm more than happy to do a CLI app, but I think this needs a way to run it on a phone (noticed I don't necessarily mean "app" ;-). I can see me doing this on my phone while waiting for the barista to make my coffee. I'm going to do something similar with Anki. I'll try to compare the two...

trane_project 4y ago
Main difference with anki is that anki explicitly discourages trying to make dependencies between flashcards or decks. I tried to work out something like that into Anki, but as I saw it, dependencies were core to what I had in mind. There's some similar functionality in supermemo, but it's based on a tree, not a graph, so it was inherently limited. No experience in mobile at all so that'll have to wait, but a GUI/website/app that works on most platforms is something I would like to work out eventually.
- airstrike 4y ago
  Mobile these days can be React Native which also "builds" for the web and desktop Next.js makes React less painful Solito makes Next.js + React Native a possibility today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30678100 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30678100
  - trane_project 4y ago
    I know it's possible. But the last time I did any frontend work, jQuery was the state of the art. So I decided that for now my efforts are better spent nailing the core experience and creating more courses.
    - airstrike 4y ago
      I'm not saying you don't know it's possible, just providing you pointers on one possible stack should you decide to go down that path